


in the morning i'll be sober and you'll still be mine

by mcwho



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Shameless Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 04:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15598206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcwho/pseuds/mcwho
Summary: Steve always marveled at how people lost all their inhibitions after they got a little alcohol in them.And then Thor gets him drunk on Asgardian liquor. Events unfold.





	in the morning i'll be sober and you'll still be mine

Steve’s relationship with drunk people has gone through a lot of changes over the years. When he was younger, there was the amusement at the ridiculous things they said and did, the intrigue of the concept of losing one’s inhibitions so totally. As he grew older, it faded into a mild annoyance, at times, the same things that used to entertain him now starting to irritate him. He could only deal with so many drunken people giggling at an unfunny joke that you obviously needed to be intoxicated to understand, before he was over it.

It’s not like Steve has never been drunk before. He was a teenager once, and also was friends with Bucky Barnes, but. He can’t remember. He can’t remember the feeling, nor can he remember what his limit was, not that that would do him a whole lot of good considering that limit’s probably quintupled now that he’s put on a little over 100 pounds in weight and nearly a foot in height. Plus, there’s the fact that, after the change, he couldn’t get drunk.

Until now.

“It is no surprise, Steven, that you have not been able to reach inebriation on Midgardian liquors alone. You are of advanced abilities and thus require a more advanced brew to give you the effect you seek.’ Thor produced a hip flask seemingly out of nowhere and poured what looked like three-quarters of it’s contents into Steve’s glass of Coke. 

“Uh,” Steve says. “I don’t know about this, Thor. Nothing really gets me there.” And believe you me, Steve’s tried. You can bet on every single one of his night terrors, he’s tried.

“Worth a try,” Thor says, and it’s apparently his last word on the subject. He claps Steve once on the shoulder and then disappears into the small but lively crowd gathered on the first floor of the Tower, celebrating the success of a mission that had seemed completely hopeless. Steve’s sat at the bar. He turns on his stool to peer into his glass, stirring the drink with his straw, then thinks, _here goes nothing_ , takes a breath, dumps the straw, and chugs it.

It tastes like floor cleaner, and his throat burns like crazy the whole time, but he’s been through worse. Some of it spills and dribbles down his chin towards the end, and when Steve puts the glass back down, he wipes at his chin with the back of his hand.

“We do have napkins,” comes a teasing voice. Nat. 

“You kids and your new-fangled contraptions. Too afraid to mop yourself with what you’ve got, like the good old days.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and pushes herself up onto the stool Thor had just left vacant.

“We should be ashamed,” she lilts. “Are you planning on sulking over here by the bar all night?” She wonders.

“Sulk–? I am _not_ sulking,” he tells her, shocked that she’d make such an accusation. Her eyebrows shoot up, something indistinguishable dancing in the green irises. It’s always something indistinguishable. Even after all these years, he can never read her. But life’s like that, Steve guesses. You can know someone all your life, know them for two lifetimes, even, but you might still never get to know them in the way you want to. Need to. Funny that.

“Yeah,” Natasha says slowly. “You’ve just been sitting here on your own for the last few hours because you’re in the _best_ of moods.” 

Okay, so maybe Steve is – not _sulking_ , he doesn’t care what Natasha, or Tony, or Thor, or Sam or anyone else who’s approached him and tried to perform some pseudo-therapy session on him had said. He’s … in a bad mood. Aren’t super-soldiers allowed to have those anymore? In peace? Is nothing sacred?

Bucky’s been back for a year.

Gun to his head, Steve couldn’t tell you what exactly he was expecting when he found him again. He knew what his _priority_ was; get Bucky safe, happy, recovered, _happy_. That was the most important thing to Steve. That had always been the most important thing to Bucky when the roles were flipped, and it used to be Bucky looking out for Steve. Not much has changed, even though a lot has. Bucky still cares. Steve’s just being whiny, wanting more, pushing to find meaning in the little things Bucky does, trying, trying, trying, to see something less platonic and more … just _more_ , when Bucky looked at him.

Natasha’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly. Huh. Steve must’ve been speaking aloud.

“Steve, are you _drunk_?”

Steve shakes his head, left, right, left, right, left, then right again. Slowly. At the look on Natasha’s face, he snorts, then then starts to laugh uncontrollably into the palm of his head. Natasha looks like she’s stumbled upon a goldmine.

“You are,” she breathes, “you are drunk.”

“Thor spiked my drink,” Steve says once he’s stopped laughing so much. “Consensually,” he adds. That part’s important.

“Uh huh,” Natasha seems oddly giddy all of a sudden. Steve’s eyebrows furrow.

“Nat,” he says slowly, drawing out the ‘ _a_ ’, “what are you–“

“Be right back,” she calls over her shoulder because she’s already leaving, walking quickly.

Steve looks at her for a second until she disappears, tries calling her again, loudly, but the music drowns it out. His shout does catch the attention of some of the other Avengers though. Thor smiles and tips the hip flask at him in a silent toast. Steve needs to buy a lifetime supply of whatever the hell is in that flask.

He feels warm on the inside, like he’s running a fever somehow but without all the other side effects like the coughing and the constant looming threat of death. No, this is nicer. But the sick days had been nice, too, in their own ways. Bucky would stay by his bedside, nurse him back to health. Kiss him stupid and completely and totally ignore Steve’s warnings that he’d get sick.

Then Bucky would get sick.

Steve would scrape his hair out of his eyes and sigh, ‘I told you’. Bucky would pull Steve against him and tell him that with a pretty nurse like him, he didn’t know if he ever wanted to get better, and then Steve would melt against him and–

“Hear you’re causing trouble, Rogers,” Bucky’s voice jolts Steve out of his reverie. Bucky doesn’t sit, just leans against the bar, arms folded. His hairs piled up on top of his head in a bun and his head is tilted to the side in mock-disapproval. Nat sent him. “Trust you to find the one way to trick that super-metabolism of yours and get wasted.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” is what ends up coming pouring out of Steve’s mouth. He slumps forward in his chair, and knows Bucky will catch him, which he does, his metal arm wrapping around Steve’s waist. Steve sags against Bucky’s chest and breathes deeply. Mmm.

Bucky laughs above him, and Steve frowns, looking right up into Bucky’s dark blue eyes, crinkled with a big grin. Bucky has laugh lines now and Steve _fucks_ with that because they’re a concrete sign if Steve’s ever seen one that Bucky is happy. “Somethin’ funny to you?” Steve demands, but the impact may be lessened a little because he smiles as he says it. 

Bucky’s hand, the one not holding Steve upright, ruffles his hair. “You’re a punk, you know that?”

“You’re the punk,” Steve grunts. “You’re the one ‘left me alone all night to get cozy with the DJ.”

“I liked her playlist!”

“That all you liked?” Steve asks, very sombrely. 

“Yes,” Bucky seems amused, almost fond as he gazes down at him. Steve’s heart is so full. “That’s all I liked. She helped me set up a Spotify account and everything.”

So, she hadn’t been putting her number in Bucky’s phone, then. Oh.

“What’s the issue?” Steve wonders. He rights himself, standing on his own two feet. He almost falls over as he does so, but this feels like a standing conversation. Also, Bucky kept rubbing his thumb in little circles against Steve’s back and Steve was just. Steve was feeling a lot of feelings. “She’s pretty, ain’t she? Must’ve been funny, too, been laughing it up ever since you sat down with her.”

“You been watching me all night?”

Steve scoffs. “How can I not?” He asks, not even joking a little.

“Beats me,” Bucky grins, all easy charm and soft, pink lips, “catch like me? You want to keep me under lock and key at all times, who knows who might come in and snatch me up?”

“Exactly,” Steve says, again, completely serious. Bucky’s right eyebrow arches, and Steve _wants_ , God, he wants, he wants, he wants.

“Are you being–" 

“Buck,” Steve cuts him off, his gaze dropping to Bucky’s mouth, stretched into this curious little smirk, and soft and wet on the inside, Steve knows, fuck, does he know. “Buck,” he says again, rougher this time. Before he’s registered the movement, his hand has danced up Bucky‘s arm, slid over his shoulder, pressed behind his neck, and pulled him in for a kiss that makes Steve feel like he’s short-circuited. Bucky’s mouth is warm and insistent on his own for far, far too few seconds before he’s pulling back again, breathing heavily.

“Steve,” Bucky says, no, _breathes_ , his breath coming out in a gush of air against Steve’s lips because Bucky didn’t go far, just rested their foreheads together, so he could look at Steve’s eyes. “Stevie, you don’t – you’re drunk. I don’t want you to do anything you’ll feel bad about in the morning.”

“Nothing’s changed,” Steve says. “Just like it used to be. I know – I know we didn’t define it or nothing, we didn’t have time to, but we didn’t need to. It was us, me an’ you, and I knew how you felt and you, me. I still feel like that, Bucky.”

Bucky cracks the most beautiful smile of the night. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, me too. You dope.”

Steve kisses him again, harder this time, and Bucky lets out the sweetest noise, it tastes like sugar on Steve’s tongue, makes him want more. He pushes Bucky into the bar counter and Bucky goes easy while Steve licks into his mouth. It kicks something low in Steve’s stomach into gear. Makes him want to see what makes Bucky tick now, if things have changed, or are still the same. Steve’ll take either, he doesn’t care, as long as he has his Bucky.

His lips are on Bucky’s neck and he’s nuzzling against his throat and enjoying the feeling of his pulse racing when Bucky’s fingers slide into Steve’s hair and tug a little. 

“Steve,” he’s panting now, eyes blown dark. “Steve, we need to – not here, okay, babydoll? Can’t go getting naked in the middle of a party–”

“We’re all friends here,” Steve tells him, then slides a hand down the back of Bucky’s stupidly, torturously tight jeans to cup his ass.

Bucky makes a noise close to a squeak. “Steve–“

“Mhm, say my name, honey,” Steve rumbles. 

“Jesus,” Bucky pants, “it’s been so – ‘s been so long, _too_ long, you ass, making me wait.”

“You made me wait, I made you wait, details, details,” Steve says, squeezing and kneading and overall enjoying the way Bucky rocks back into his hands. “Better late than never, right?”

“Yeah,” Bucky nods. “Yeah. Now c’mere, not done kissing you yet.”

“If you two,” comes Tony Stark’s voice all of a sudden, “are quite finished _defiling_ this room–“

“Not quite finished yet,” Steve tells him, not moving even an inch away from Bucky. “Actually, we’re not even close.”

“Look,” Tony says, “I get it, ice cube one and two, reunited, together again, with a little help, of course – we’re going to have to have a team meeting about why an enhanced super-soldier can’t recognise when his friends are deliberately manipulating his situation, by the way – but please, please, and _please_ , do not fuck in the middle of this party. I will never recover from seeing Captain America taking – or giving? Whatever your preference–“

“We switch,” Bucky supplies.

“– did _not_ ask, so please take this to the privacy of your own rooms unless you want to kill my last piece of childhood innocence. Do you really want that weight on your shoulders?”

There’s a pregnant pause while Steve considers the distance between here and his room, and Bucky enjoys the way Tony looks more and more fearful as he considers the fact that he may need to evacuate everyone from the room because Steve may actually decide to throw all caution to the wind on this one.

“Come on, sugar,” Bucky says eventually, stroking a hand over Steve’s shoulder-blade. “Let’s take this upstairs, yeah? Haven’t got any slick down here anyway.”

Tony clamps his hands over his ears. Bucky laughs and leads Steve out of the party.

 

 

 

They do have that team meeting. Steve sternly scolds Thor for getting him drunk for matchmaking purposes, Natasha for sending Bucky his way after the fact, and Tony, for orchestrating the whole thing, he doesn’t care how sick he was of their ‘lovesick moping’. 

(Steve's scolding may not have the intended impact, partly due to the fact that during said scolding, his neck is covered in deep purple marks and Bucky is sitting by his side looking serene and smug and equally debauched.)

(Steve feels whole again.)

**Author's Note:**

> its literally 5am and the fact that steve cant get drunk was haunting me
> 
> let me know what you thought, feedback fuels me!!


End file.
